


Tu Meri Dost Hain (You're My Only Real Friend)

by svgasuga



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: ATLAofColor, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Sokka (Avatar), Insecure Sokka (Avatar), Minor Sokka/Suki, No Plot/Plotless, Past Sokka/Yue (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Songfic, excessive use of commas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svgasuga/pseuds/svgasuga
Summary: [He’d known it was love then, and that it’s still love now.]Sokka explores his feelings about Yue.Inspired by Tu Meri Dost Hain from Yuvvraaj.
Relationships: Sokka & Yue (Avatar), Sokka/Yue (Avatar)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 22





	Tu Meri Dost Hain (You're My Only Real Friend)

**Author's Note:**

> I suggest listening to Tu Meri Dost Hain from the Yuvvraaj soundtrack before/while reading this. [Here's a translation of the lyrics, if you'd like.](https://www.filmyquotes.com/songs/724)
> 
> I originally wanted to write a Sokka/Zuko fic based on this song, but because of the moon/ocean imagery I felt that it suited Sokka/Yue a lot better lol 
> 
> Please be aware that there's no linear plot! This isn't proofread, so all mistakes are my own. Oops
> 
> Let me know if there's anything I need to tag.

आजा में हवाओं पे बिठाके ले चलूँ तू ही तो, तू ही तो मेरी दोस्त हैं / आजा में खेलों में उठाके ले चलूँ तू ही तो मेरी दोस्त हैं

_ Come, I'll carry you on the winds, you're my only real friend / Come, I'll carry you in my thoughts, you're my only real friend _

* * *

Sokka hadn’t always believed in spirits.

How could he? There were no spirits that stopped the Fire Nation when they decimated the Air Nomads. There were no spirits to save his mother, to stop his father from leaving him behind, to help him when he took on the responsibility of looking after everything that was left of his tribe. 

It was just his luck then, wasn’t it? To be taken to the Spirit World by Hei Bai and later fall in love with the literal saviour of the Moon Spirit. If he listens closely enough at night, he can get himself to hear the hum of her moonlight still trying to connect with him from her place in the sky.

He’d felt a connection with Yue the second he’d laid eyes on her, and he knows now that that connection would never fade. He wouldn’t let go of her this time, not like he did at the North Pole.

He’d let her die. Sokka had let Yue – the first  _ real _ friend he had ever made – die. 

No one else had felt the way she went limp in his arms; they’d been too busy staring at her shine in the midst of the stars, lighting up the North Pole in a way it never had before. No one had seen the way that remorse had shown itself on Sokka’s face in places where moonlight should have been.

It wasn’t easy, setting up camp each night underneath the very thing he wished he didn’t have to remember. Even in his dreams, Yue’s light shines underneath his eyelids; a staunch reminder of another person who he couldn’t save.

He should be used to it by now, really. He hadn’t been able to save his mother from the wrath of the Fire Nation, he hadn’t been able to prevent his father from leaving the tribe, and he hadn’t been able to help Katara when she’d needed it the most. He’d left Katara, his  _ baby sister _ , to take on the responsibility of his mother when she hadn’t yet fully been able to process her own grief. Sokka had somehow convinced himself that he was his tribe’s saving grace, that he was the only person who could be the acting barrier between the Southern Water Tribe and the Fire Nation. He’d gotten himself into thinking that his duty to his tribe was all that he was, and proceeded to ignore everything else in the process.

_ Duty. _

That’s what it was all about, wasn’t it? That’s all that it  _ had _ been about. Maybe that’s what brought him to Yue, the first night they’d met in the North. She had held her regality and duty with a grace he would never be able to fathom. She’d felt a fierce sense of obligation towards her tribe, something he had seen in himself before he abandoned his own and ran off with his little sister and  _ the Avatar _ .

It had been far too easy for him to feel sorry for himself when he’d constantly been bombarded with Katara and Aang’s water magic, back before Aang had mastered all four elements and before Katara had even learned how to heal. Sokka had promised his father that he’d keep Katara safe, and instead he’d been eclipsed by skills he would never possess. Growing up, he had always watched Katara with reverence and a little jealousy as she shakily learned to manipulate water with pure willpower and determination whereas he’d barely just learned how to move his own limbs without looking like an awkward toddler. He could use his boomerang, sure, but who would bother looking at his piece of scrap metal when Katara had been creating ice by herself from the moment she was born? 

The truth is, even after the war, he would never truly be acknowledged in the same way the rest of the group was. Suki with her combat skills and physical prowess and determined leadership; Zuko, who had been banished from his own home as a literal child, with his dragon-esque fire and the denouncing of his entire ancestry; Toph, who had learned how to earthbend from badgermoles, who literally  _ invented _ a new style of bending at the age of twelve; Katara, the last waterbender from their tribe, a young girl who had been forced to grow up too fast and had willed herself into mastering healing and fighting because she hadn’t been given the privilege of being a child; finally, Aang, the literal Avatar and the last worldly connection that any of them have to the Air Nomads, the kid whose entire country had been decimated and erased by the Fire Nation, and the one to end the Hundred Year War by  _ taking away the Fire Lord’s bending _ .

What had Sokka done? Aid the Mechanist in creating a literal weapon of mass destruction? He had inadvertently given the Fire Nation a new tool to wreak havoc with, and he has the audacity to associate himself with the likes of Team Avatar? 

Yue would probably slap him upside the head if she knew what he was thinking. But she couldn’t, because she wasn’t here. 

_ And whose fault is that. _

When he finds himself spiralling like this, he dares to look at the one thing constantly pushing to keep Yue company: the ocean. He knows, somewhere deep,  _ deep  _ inside that Yue’s ascension into the Moon Spirit hadn’t been his fault.  _ He knows that. _ The ocean helps remind him. The ebb and flow of the water nudges him away from his thoughts. Maybe it’s the crashing of the ocean against the cliffs, or maybe it’s the calm return of the water as it pulls itself away from the rocks. Regardless, something about the ocean forces him to think about mortality and how no one could truly escape it, no matter how badly he needed them to. 

Sokka doesn’t put his faith into fate, nor does he rely on the Spirits, but he sees Yue in the way the water constantly changes its form as it navigates through the world. He sees her in every wave, he sees the moonlight refracting off of the water, and he understands. He understands that Tui had saved Yue’s life and that she had saved Tui’s life in return. He understands that  _ Yue _ had just been another way for Tui to be for a little while, in their world. For that little while, she had been still water in the ocean until she collided with Sokka’s cliffs and jagged edges. His firm and unmoving stubbornness crashed with her icy ocean spray and dignified fluidity. It had been invigorating, a welcome refresher in his life that had brought him serenity and peace.

In another way, it had just been Tui, whose life had apparently been a little too calm amongst the other spirits. Tui had manifested into the form of Yue, crashing into their world,  _ his _ world, against the persistent and permanent presence of a violent and hateful war. Yue had provided them with a brief reprieve from the aggressive company of fire and heat. 

And then it was gone. 

She’d gone away from him as quickly and as swiftly as she’d crashed. 

She had returned to the ocean, to her place with La, and he won’t get to see  _ Yue _ again. 

He comes to peace with that. 

Sometimes, the shore flows away to where the night falls and he imagines he can see Yue in the way her light reflects upon the ocean. Through the seas, he sees her dance on the surface of the water with the same grace he had seen her walk with back in the North Pole, back when the moonlight had just been moonlight and not the remnants of Yue’s bright smile. He sees Yue on the horizon, on the pleasant unity of the stars and sea. Officially, she had been the princess of the Northern Water Tribe, but upon seeing where her light lands on the ocean, Sokka thinks she should be crowned as the queen of the night. 

In a lot of ways, Yue had been his first and only friend. 

Katara doesn’t count, and neither do the older women and little boys that had been in his village.

Aang didn’t really count either. It had taken a while for Sokka to get over the oogie eyes Aang had for his sister. He had spent a good portion of their first few months together pointedly ignoring the way Aang had blushed every time he so much as looked at Katara. 

And sure, he had had a brief tryst with Suki back when they’d visited Kyoshi Island for the first time, but it was hard to get any real friendship going when his ass was constantly getting beat and the village was on fire.

Yue was a different story, however. The first time they had taken a ride on Appa together was the first time that Sokka had felt anything outside of the crushing obligation to save the world. A weight on his shoulders had been lifted and it was as if him and Yue had been nothing but the wind. He still remembers the way her laugh had resonated in the clouds and the way the sun had gleamed from her hair. It was the first time in a long time that a smile had genuinely made its way onto his face, the first time everything in his heart had been laid bare in the sky, and the first time he really felt like someone had understood him. 

She hadn’t scoffed at his attempts to woo her; from his proposal to do an activity together to his fish carving, she had taken it all in a stride and accepted him with open arms and tender eyes. She’d seen the vulnerability in him when he hadn’t even allowed his own sister to see his weaknesses, and she’d seen his courage when he’d otherwise constantly been glossed over. 

He’d known it was love then, and that it’s still love now. 

He’s not too proud to admit that his devotion to Yue could be perceived as childhood naivety to an outsider. He knows that he doesn’t come across as the affectionate type, and he’s aware of his lacklustre displays of loyalty, especially when they pale in comparison to what Aang says and does for Katara, but that doesn’t mean his feelings hadn’t been real. Just because his emotions are largely internalised doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel them all the same. 

Suki had been his saving grace, in terms of his journey towards expression. He’d grown up with rigid ideas of manhood and masculinity, not knowing that these ideas inadvertently have, and would continue to, hurt him. He’d seen how she could still be a formidable and strong warrior, despite her outward displays of affection towards him. Her passion had built her strength, and she’d taught him to do the same. 

It still aches, sometimes, when he remembers Yue. He feels so much remorse for how he’d let her go and how he continues to live through his days while Yue is forced to serve through the night. He feels guilty that he had been unable to fulfil Arnook’s request of protecting his daughter, and now she has to be the guardian of the sky. 

She still floats through Sokka’s brain, not unlike the way they’d flown atop of Appa in frosty air, carefree and happy. He likes to pretend that she’d been carried along with them on their journey to be the child saviours of the world; an honorary member of Team Avatar had she been able to join them. 

Sokka still wasn’t completely sold on spirits. They’d let a young girl sacrifice herself in the midst of a war that the spirits previously had no apparent interest in. They’d taken her from his world far before either of them were ready to separate; her wave had been drawn back into the ocean before it had made any indents on the shore. 

Sokka didn’t think he’d ever truly believe in the goodness of spirits, not like everyone else. But as he looks at the moonlight and basks in the sea of sounds that Tui and La create together as the moon and the ocean, he thinks he could flow in Yue’s spirit forever. 

* * *

आवाज़ का दरिया हूँ, बहता हूँ में नीली रातों में / मैं जागता रहता हूँ, नींद भरी झील से आँखों में आवाज़ हूँ में

_ I’m the sea of sound, I flow in the blue nights / I always stay awake, in the sleepy eyes like that of the lake, I’m a sound _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you liked it! If you did, feel free to leave a kudos and/or a comment! I wrote this on a whim and I'm still kinda nervous about posting fics, so plz b nice 
> 
> Hopefully this format looks a lot better, I didn't wanna do a verse-story-verse-story thing again.
> 
> [Here's where I pulled the Hindi text from.](http://hindi.lyricsgram.com/song/tu-meri-dost-hai-35093)
> 
> You can find me on tumblr @svgasuga or @huanism !


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